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The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive became the first book project on Kickstarter to cross the million dollar mark last night. Currently sitting at $1,072,528 raised from 12,797 backers and with 23 hours to go, comic book artist Rich Burlew has now put all other crowdfunded comics and publishing projects in the shade by one or two orders of magnitude. The question that authors and artists are now asking themselves is, how?

Kickstarter has unarguably proven its worth as a business model for creatives, with two other projects also breaking the million dollar barrier over the last fortnight. The Elevation Dock, an innovative dock for iPhones, raised$1,464,706 from 12,521 backers. And Double Fine Adventure, a video game project from Double Fine and 2 Player Productions, today passed the $2 million mark with more than 60,000 supporters and 22 days to go. It seems reasonable to think that it could raise $4 million or more in total.

So sceptics should put aside their cynicism: Kickstarter, and sites like it, are now incontrovertibly capable of funding a diverse array of creative projects at very high levels. As an author, it’s exciting to see Kickstarter raising money at a level that competes with some of the biggest advances that you’ll see on offer from traditional publishing. Those advances are usually reserved for celebrities or established best-sellers, but Kickstarter now brings that sort of funding within reach of almost everyone.

Rich Burlew's OOTS has a big following

The devil is in the details, however, and Burlew’s project provides some interesting insight into where the challenges lie for anyone wanting to replicate his success.

The most important thing, I would argue, is that Burlew has a huge fanbase. He’s drawn the Order of the Stick (OOTS) comic strip for the last nine years, producing over 800 strips in the process. He’s already got a number of books in his back catalogue that he wants to get back into print, and his fans very clearly want that too. He has lot of people who are not just willing to stump up their own money, they are also very happy to spread the word outside of their own community.

In short, Burlew has reach.

In the case of the Elevator Dock, that reach came via the media with coverage from Wired, the New York Times, Gizmodo, SlashGear, TNW, GigaOM and many, many others. And for Double Fine, again, it’s a matter of having been around since 2000, producing a critically acclaimed game, Psychonauts, and picking up a slew of loyal fans along the way.

There’s also a sense of adventure with these projects. They aimed high. Burlew asked for $57,750, the Elevation Dock goal was $75,000, and Double Fine hoped for $400,000.

Looking at the fiction section of Kickstarter, few ask for those kinds of sums. In fact, when I looked at a selection of the most recent successful fiction projects, the average requested was $3,000, and the average raised was $3,600. Modest, yes. And doable, certainly. But not ambitious.

I think that’s because authors and small publishers don’t have communities big enough to support more substantial book publication projects. I know I don’t. My next Kickstarter project is likely to ask for $5,000 with the hope that I overfund a bit. If my success rate is 1 percent (equivalent to a direct mail campaign), and let’s say I need 150 backers, then I need to reach 15,000 people, which is about doable given my network.

Social media, of course, makes reaching that many people technically simpler but it certainly doesn’t make it quick or easy. Indeed, when I look at my author friends on Twitter, I’m struck by how few followers many of them have, even the ones with critically acclaimed books on the shelves. The few exceptions are already best sellers and their fans simply migrate to wherever they can gain access to their favourite writers.